The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - Essay Example

?The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair Question Answer: “And so all over the world two es were forming, with an unbridged chasm between them--the capitalist class, with its enormous fortunes, and the proletariat, bound into slavery by unseen chains.” (Sinclair, 333) Sinclair explains the situation between the two classes that has formed in America over the twentieth century. He says that the two classes, one the elite class and the other wage-workers, are so separated from their ideals and life to each other that the two classes are separated from each other by two cliffs on the far side with no bridge between them and no way to understand the lives of each other. Question 2; Answer: “So America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed. If one could only manage to get the price of a passage, he could count his troubles at an end.” (Sinclair, 23) This passage of the book shows that a Sinclair, being a muckraker, thinks that the American dream to get immigrants in the early twentieth century is just a lie. Here the immigrants, or the lovers and young, as stated by Sinclair, are just means to an end for the elite American class to get cheap labor and the lives of the immigrants then are bound to unchained wage-work slavery. Question 3; Answer: Andrew Carnegie, a late 19th century and 20th century industrialist, whom have also been dubbed as the richest man in the world at that time was famous for his technological advancements in America which turned America from an agricultural to an industrial nation. Despite his successes and his being a philanthropist in his later life, his relationship with the worker class will always be remembered as something which was bitter. It mainly was because of the conflict in Homestead, Pennsylvania in his steel plant where his union-breaking decision in 1892 led to the death of many men where several many were also fatally injured. Question 4; Answer: From the information gathered from both the documentary and the book, it is safe to say that the book is more biased towards a more socialist cause for the undertreated immigrant wage-workers of the earlier twentieth century. The documentary about Andrew Carnegie, although sheds light on this relationship between management and labor, is also about life of Andrew Carnegie as a successful Scottish-American Industrialist. While the book that Sinclair wrote could be argued that it was for the sole purpose of organizing the workers in Chicago for a socialist cause. Question 5; Answer: Another book that deals with the labor-management relationship in the Twentieth century is the Shopfloor Matters by David Fairris. This book not only gives a view to the labor history in America, but also the changing institutional arrangements in 20th century made by the shop floor governance for the American Manufacturing industry. This book builds on the muckrakers of that time that wrote about labor-management relations and industrial relations scholar to provide a broad analysis on the changing arrangements that effect the shop floor labor-management relations in the manufacturing industry. This book is a good source because it is the best research done on the shop floor governance during the 20th century and the changes made to the institutional arrangements. Not only that but hard evidence about the relationship between the outcomes provided by the changing shop floor and the changing arrangement made in the shop floor institutes. Question 6; Answer: Labor-management relation in the early 20th century is marked by a colossal gap and misunderstanding between the lives led by capitalists and the wage-workers. Question 7; Answer: The inference that I would use from the jungle is the struggling lives of the immigrant that seem to come to America with so much hope and dreams for their future but eventually end up with nothing but a cruel life where hardships and obstacles are the only truth that they find. Question 8; Answer: The inference that I would use from the Andrew Carnegie documentary is the fact that the labor-management relations got even poorer after his decision of breaking the union led to many fatalities. This time probably marked the start of the rebellion from the working class and the strife between the capitalists and proletariats. Question 9; Answer: Here I would use the inference that the incapability of the American industry to provide arrangements for more flexible ways of working within the manufacturing industry and the consequences of it resulting in the hard and unbearable life of a working class. Essay; Letter to My Cousin in Europe: Living in America in this age hasn’t been easy. Although I have permanently settled here with my family and children, I wish so often that I could just leave it all here and fly back to the country that I grew up in and have only grown but it is not possible for me now as my life is here now. I have bent my back for a happy life in America and all it has brought me is sorrow and eternal hardships. Being an uneducated immigrant in America in the city of Chicago, I have had to make ends meet by doing labor work. The pay system here is so out of sorts that I have to work 12 hours a day minimum to make ends meet. The situation here is very grim and people like us are only used as the how the elite industrial class sees as fit. “Here was a population, low-class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery.” (Sinclair, 108) The book ‘The Jungle’, written by Upton Sinclair, is the result of his research and hard evidences that he himself collected by working undercover as a labor. The passage here is the proof of the degrading quality of life that I and my family have had to face in the last 20 years of our lives. Sure, when I was alone, it was not that difficult to be able to take care of my needs. But as I married and my family grew, it became increasingly taxing for me to be able to support them despite the little pay raise that us working class would have after a year or so. Not only that but the situation of health and the safety of workplace here is not something that I would wish on the worst of my enemies. The industrial section, in order to make profits on profits would not only ignore the health and safety of their employees working there but also the hygiene of the general populace. Where I work, they would not waste anything that can be used as a potential raw material for their industry despite how unethical and bad it would be for the citizens of America. Dead cattle were used as sausage meat and even the people who fall in the rendering tanks were being used as fertilizers by workers here. But we had no say in it because if we stopped working we would have no way to feed our families no matter how little we seemed to do now. This situation although has gotten better ever since Upton Sinclair exposed these behind-the-scene work of the industrial sector, but our lives are still as hard as they were before with little to no change. We immigrants still live in overcrowded slums with no facilities and the buildings are so rundown that it seems that the roof will fall on our head any time. I fear not only for the safety of my own and my family but the safety of other immigrants that have fallen in the traps of achieving a better life here same as me. The water provided here is unsanitary and the sewage system is so out of sort that an epidemic would soon break out. The working class here have been trying to rebel against these tyrants but our own lack of finesse in approaching the matter and the power that our industrial bosses possess is still binding us to this life of slavery and starvation. The rebellions started before have also resulted in the losses of many immigrant lives and the destruction of families that the immigrants like me are even scared to speak out about this unfair treatment out of fear now. The industrial sector is only struggling to provide a better workplace environment for not only the immigrants but the native working class and pass it off as the restriction of resources and it is hard for me to believe the truth behind this proclamation at all. So, I beg you to please reconsider your decision to leave your life there and come here to pursue a better one because believe me, whatever you have here is thousand times better than the hell hole that will be awaiting you should you decide to emigrate from our country. References Sinclair, Upton. The jungle. University of Illinois Press, 1988. Read More